


Air

by rudbeckia



Series: Mashup Meme Fics [3]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Denial of Feelings, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 09:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15139736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudbeckia/pseuds/rudbeckia
Summary: There’s an attack on The Finalizer. Bridge comms are out and Kylo Ren is not on the bridge where, in Hux’s opinion, he belongs. Hux leaves the bridge to Opan and goes to fetch Kylo himself. A disaster leaves Hux and Kylo shut in a control room with a diminishing supply of oxygen. The brush with death makes Kylo decide it’s time for Hux to face his long-denied feelings.





	Air

To the technician sent with an emergency message that missed its recipient in the flurry of cross-ship comms, the bridge was a scene of chaos with red-faced officers yelling urgent commands and using hand signals to one another while the viewports sporadically lit up with reflected blaster-fire. But to Tritt Opan, standing at parade rest and observing so that he could take command at a moment’s notice, the bridge was a hub of decisive action. The technician ran to Opan, who frowned and shoved her towards the comms console. Unamo grabbed the datapad thrust in her face and added her voice, soaring over the cacophony to find the officer on weapons.

“POWER DOWN DORSAL ARRAY! COUNT ONE-FIFTY. TECH.”

Mitaka acknowledged with raised eyebrows and a nod. Unamo started the count back from one hundred and fifty seconds, ready to give Mitaka the signal to reset the cannon cluster from his own console once the emergency repair crew was clear, then smiled at the technician and sent her to join the team wrestling with the comms system’s faulty power conduit.

Standing at the end of the observation walkway, General Armitage Hux looked out over the raging battle, making his own calculations in silence, prioritising targets and estimating losses, responding bodily when plasma bolts blasted the hull of the Finalizer and were—just—absorbed by the forward shields.  
“We can’t take much more of this, sir,” observed Mitaka. Mitaka’s quiet sentiment echoed his own unspoken thought but Hux glared and Mitaka looked away.  
“FIRE ON THOSE CRUISERS!” Hux roared in response. “ALL WEAPONS!”  
Mitaka tapped staccato on his console while Hux conducted the bridge into coherent action with a flurry of gestures and terse commands. Mitaka glanced at Unamo and received a head shake.  
“Sir, dorsal array offline for another... eighty seconds.”  
“GET IT ONLINE! NOW!”  
“Yessir.”  
Mitaka punched commands. Subconsciously he asked the Force to have the repair complete and the tech team safely clear as power coursed back to the ion cannon, and he paused for a count of five before executing the command. But Mitaka was not an outwardly superstitious man. After a few seconds of held breath, a light blinked from amber to red on his console.  
“Dorsal array hot!”  
“FIRE!”  
Mitaka sent the commands. Within a second, streaks flared across the viewport. One of the attacking ships exploded under the renewed barrage and a brief cheer rose from the data pit. Hux gave him a smile and a nod. Across the bridge, Unamo was shaking her head. Mitaka hoped that the tech team’s sacrifice was worth it.

When the power conduit repair was complete, the bridge comms network crackled back to life. All the coded shouts ceased and the bridge went quiet. The battle still raged outside and Hux still yelled commands, but the responses were silent nods and immediate actions with all inter-personnel commands relayed electronically. Unamo had her hands and her head full now, but she stole a glance at the tech whose life she’d saved by chance. Engrossed in her work, the technician did not return the look and Unamo didn’t have time to search for her ID. The General was looking at her.  
“Find the Supreme Leader. He should be here by my side.”  
Unamo nodded and activated the search for Ren’s tracker, silently thinking that the last place Hux would want Kylo Ren is on the bridge, getting in the way of his victory.  
“Sir! The Supreme Leader is in corridor forty-seven-B en route to hangar eight. He is not responding to his comms.”  
“WHAT?” Hux looked genuinely upset. Not with the cold, detached look he would use when he had to chastise an officer, but with red-faced fury. “Show me!”  
Unamo projected the location from her console’s holo-display. Hux gritted his teeth.  
“He’s going for his TIE. He’s an... The Supreme Leader ought to be at my side! I will...” Hux looked over the swarm of TIEs that easily outnumbered the X-Wings, and gave Tritt Opan a nod. “You have the bridge. I will return with the Supreme Leader to finish this nonsense.”  
Opan saluted and took Hux’s place at the end of the walkway. Behind him, Hux marched out and, as soon as he felt unobserved, broke into a run.

Kylo Ren, meanwhile, had deactivated his personal commlink and was set on action. Being Supreme Leader had not, so far, been all he expected. Hux had said that the First Order needed him to be a ‘real’ leader, but Kylo was neither a politician like his mother, an autocrat like Snoke, nor a warlord like Hux. He had, he admitted now, too much of his father in him, whatever that meant, and he fought off the stab of emotion the random thought forced upon him. He did not have time for sentiment. His TIE-Silencer was waiting and his wingmen would be sliding into their own cockpits ready to follow him and pick off any enemy fighters he missed. Kylo Ren was on his way to join the battle on his own terms, and if he basked in the looks Hux gave him whenever he returned from a fight, nobody needed to know.

On the bridge, Opan rapidly found he was out of his depth. Hux made command look so easy. Even Peavey, before Hux had him quietly spaced for his insubordination, could command with some measure of finesse. Used to more quiet and premeditated methods of rising through the ranks, Opan struggled to keep on top of everything that was going on. Mitaka took complete control of weapons and Unamo soon had comms under her control, but Opan sensed their silent judgment and hoped that Hux would return soon.

“INCOMING! SHIELDS MINIMAL! BRACE!”

Opan grasped the guard rail just in time. A damaged rebel cruiser jumped to lightspeed at the furthest extent of their shields. It missed the bridge but tore through the port side of the hull. His last thought before the grav generator failed, sending the bridge crew stumbling from their own inertia, was that the First Order was right to disapprove of such vainglorious methods as the ‘Holdo Manoeuvre’. Unprotected from sudden changes in acceleration as the Finalizer attempted to compensate for the impact before the secondary bridge grav generator kicked in, Opan lost consciousness. Helpless, he slipped and tumbled the length of the walkway to the new “down” at the back of the bridge.

Hux had almost caught up to Kylo outside the hangar where his TIE waited, always ready, before the cruiser hit. The lurch from the impact sent Hux careening into Ren and they landed in a tangle on the floor of a tertiary control room just inside the hangar at the instant the hull vaporised away from the outer wall, taking the force field that contained their precious atmosphere with it. The control area blast door slammed down, saving them from being thrown out into space and sealing them into a room where metal and plastine fires fogged the air from the service ducts. A siren warned of impending fire-control protocols. Hux cursed and scrambled up.  
“Get into an emergency pod!”  
“There isn’t one.”  
Kylo sounded calm as a hiss developed into a roar and air began to pump away from their sealed-off section of the hangar. Hux scowled at him and replied, “Suit yourself if you want to die here,” and frantically searched around for somewhere he might squirrel himself away with enough air to survive until he could comm for assistance. Kylo shrugged and caught Hux by the arm, pulling him close while Hux fought him off.  
“Stay still!” Kylo held tighter. “Don’t make me knock you out.”  
“Are you karking mad? Are you trying to kill us both? We need to...” Hux frowned. He could no longer hear the air recyclers clicking and whirring as they pumped the atmosphere out of the hangar, and the fire that had blazed up seconds ago reduced to a glow then went out. “What’s going on?”  
“I’m using the Force to hold a bubble of air around us. Please be still and stay very close to me.”  
“How close?” Hux asked, reaching a hand out, wondering if he would be able to feel where the their personal atmosphere ended. Kylo grabbed Hux’s hand and bought it back to his chest.  
“Put your arms around me.”  
Hux sighed. “Why? Does the Supreme Leader need a hug?”  
A deep, unfamiliar sound startled Hux until he realised that Kylo had laughed.

Three minutes later, Hux was shifting his grip on Kylo’s waist and flicking at his commlink. “Opan isn’t answering his comms. Either the power to the remote network has glitched again or the bridge is gone. In either eventuality, we need to get out of here.”  
“Will your code cylinders open a blast door to vacuum or return oxygen to a room still hot enough to ignite?” asked Kylo, raising one eyebrow.  
“Get me to a terminal,” replied Hux with a glare. “I need to contact the bridge, if it is still there. Opan can use my override code to reset life support from there. If not, I need to slice into the main operations network and do it myself.”  
“You left Opan in command.” Kylo frowned at Hux. “Why Opan? He’s loyal to you but inexperienced.”  
“You just answered your own question.” Hux nudged Kylo towards the nearest data terminal. “My loyal captain needs to know that his ambition outstrips his expertise.”  
“Ah.” Kylo nodded. “And he was conveniently in command when this disaster struck.”  
“Could not have happened at a more opportune moment. One must see the advantage in every situation. If he gets us out of here I suppose I will have to promote him despite his appalling lack of skill on the bridge.”  
Kylo suppressed a shiver as he stared at Hux. “You’re colder than space, general.”  
Hux shrugged his free shoulder. “I’m alive, Supreme Leader, and in command.” He smiled thinly at Kylo’s expression. “Oh do come on, Supreme Leader. You have no idea how to foster that kind of personal loyalty in your subordinates.”  
“Good thing I only have to rely on _your_ loyalty,” said Kylo with a brief shake of his head.  
“And if I get you out of this before we run out of oxygen in this little cocoon of yours?” Hux cocked an eyebrow at Kylo.  
“We’ll see.” Kylo shuffled them closer to the terminal and slid around behind Hux, arm firmly around Hux’s waist from behind in case he strayed too far from the bubble of now-depleted air contained with the Force.  
“See?” Hux slipped a code cylinder into a socket and the terminal lit up. He patted Kylo’s hands and leaned back onto him. “You’re getting the hang of it.”

Opan came to with a throbbing headache and pain in his arm and shoulder. He stood up slowly, using his good arm to haul on the edge of a console, and surveyed the bridge. The officers in the data pits were busy carrying out their duties as if nothing had happened. He supposed that when the grav cut out they had not had as far to fall. Mitaka, bleeding from the nose and smearing the trickle with his sleeve, nodded to him and continued monitoring and adjusting the weapons systems. Unamo and the technician worked on the comms power conduit once more to restore the faulty bridge network. Other officers were less fortunate and Opan did not look twice at some of the inert forms that lay at the back of the bridge. He suspected that at least one of them had saved his life at the expense of their own by breaking his fall.  
“You!” Opan pointed at a petty officer who was tending to an injured comrade. “Paze! Get on a comms console. Locate the General.”  
Petty Officer Paze sprang up to follow orders. Opan struggled to focus on the scene outside the viewports. Unasked, Mitaka delivered a short report on the progress of the battle in the minutes since the Holdo Manoeuvre had scraped the side off the Finalizer. It seemed that in the chaos that followed the impact, the rebels had jumped to the relative safety of hyperspace. Opan could see TIEs returning, called back to undamaged hangars, as the debris that littered the pitch dark of space occasionally sparked off the shields.

Opan’s horror at the realisation he might have to face First Order Command as the senior officer in charge of a damaged Star Destroyer was interrupted by a shout from Paze.  
“Sir! I have General Hux and Leader Ren!”  
“They’re alive?” Opan sighed in relief. “Thank the Force.”  
_”I appreciate the sentiment, Captain Opan, but there is no need for superstition. Reinstate life support at this location immediately.”_  
“Yes, sir!” Opan turned to the data pit on his right. “You heard the general! Now!”

On their knees in the hangar control room, Hux and Kylo clung together in muffled silence, listening out for the hum and buzz of the ship to return and indicate that air filled their space once more. Kylo’s bubble of air was desperately low on oxygen and Hux could barely keep his eyes open. Kylo guided Hux to the floor and cradled his head, wondering with a mind that felt full of fluid whether he could manipulate the individual molecules of the air to bring oxygen closer to their faces and push carbon dioxide away. He didn’t dare attempt it in this addled state. He closed his eyes. “You’re right,” Kylo murmured against Hux’s cheek as his head spun. “You’re a survivor. I should stick close to you.”

Hux woke first and wondered for a few seconds where he was. He took a few luxuriously deep breaths and rubbed his forehead before pushing himself to his feet. The movement roused Kylo who sprang up as if nothing had happened then gripped the edge of the console to save himself from blacking out again.  
“Well then,” said Hux brightly. “It appears we are alive and Opan has managed a command override from the bridge. I, um, appreciate your action in, um, this incident.”  
“You can’t say it, can you?” Ren glowered at Hux.  
“Say what, Supreme Leader?”  
“I’ll start. Thank you for shoving me into this control room and saving my life.” Ren raised his eyebrows and leaned forward. “Your turn.”  
“Um. Well then. I suppose.” Hux looked at his fingernails. “Um. Thank you for saving my life with... that thing you did.”  
“Good enough.” Kylo walked to the blast door. “Ready?”

Hux nodded. Kylo opened the door with the manual override that was active now there was atmosphere on both sides. Together they stared at the ragged hole in the side of the ship, sealed by emergency force fields that kept the cold vacuum of space at bay. Hux marched across the warped floor of the hangar to look out and Kylo followed with a hand on Hux’s shoulder, ready to grip in case the force fields failed. Hux’s personal commlink chirped. He answered it and shot out a few commands then turned to Kylo.  
“The rebels are aware of our location and we have sustained enough damage to make me unwilling to engage in another battle. I have ordered Opan to take us on a hop through hyperspace before they return to finish their botched attack. Also, it appears that we are marooned in this hangar until the fires in the link corridors are all out. Paze estimates at least three hours. I ordered him to have it done in one.”  
“One hour.” Kylo’s hand tightened on Hux’s shoulder and Hux was suddenly very aware of Kylo’s bulk close behind him. “I wonder what we could find to occupy ourselves with for one hour.”  
Hux turned toward Kylo. “I should think we ought to take this opportunity to discuss future battle strategy and command protocol. For example, the Supreme Leader should be seen to be a commanding presence on the bridge, not running off to leap into a dogfight at the slightest provocation.”  
“That’s your job,” said Kylo. “The protocol, I mean. The bridge. You’re good at it. I’m good at—“  
“Jumping into your TIE and shooting things.”

Kylo scowled and lifted his hand from Hux’s shoulder. “Why are you like this?”  
Hux scowled back. “Like what, Supreme Leader?”  
“As soon as I get close to you, drop my guard a little, you attack. I am not your enemy.” Kylo sighed. “I thought I had made that clear. You saved my life, I saved yours. Do you see that only in terms of some kind of favour received and repaid?”  
Hux was silent and he looked away.  
“Kriff, what a shell you are.” Kylo bit his lip and watched Hux’s expression set hard again. “Are you numb to all of this? Am I wasting my breath? Have you no feeling at all?”  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” replied Hux, watching the blankness of space through the force field.  
“I think you do,” said Kylo. “What does this make you feel?”  
Kylo brought both hands up, cupped Hux’s face and kissed him.

Hux jerked back in surprise but recovered rapidly, although he was unable to stop staring into Kylo’s face. He cleared his throat with a soft cough.  
“Supreme Leader, are you in full command of your faculties?”  
“Yes. Kiss me. I think you want to.” Kylo shrugged. “I won’t ask again.”  
Hux took a breath with the intention of asking Kylo just what he expected that would achieve, but the look of quiet confidence in Kylo’s face dissipated his resolve. Had Kylo wavered, Hux would have scoffed. Instead he planted a brief, closed-mouth kiss on Kylo’s lips. Kylo responded with a huff.  
“You can do better than that. I’ve seen the way you look at me sometimes. When you think nobody’s watching.”  
“Oh?” Hux rocked back but Kylo’s hands were behind his waist, holding him in place.  
“You think if you’re abrasive and push me away, it’ll all stop. But you can barely contain it any more. Admit it. You want me.”  
Hux swallowed and watched the light reflecting from Kylo’s irises. Hux pressed his lips together into a tight line then said, “I only like nice men. You are not a nice man.”  
Kylo smiled. “Liar. You like that I’m dangerous. How long has it been, Hux? How long have you wondered what might happen if you had the guts to step out of your bubble?”  
Hux swallowed again and looked away at last. “Five years,” he admitted quietly.  
“Don’t you think you should do something about that? Now you know you can?”  
Oblivious to the blue streaks of hyperspace, Hux looked into Kylo’s face then brought one hand up to touch Kylo’s hair. He studied the wave between his fingers, rolling the strands and smoothing them, then pushed his fingers deep into Kylo’s thick locks and pulled him forward to kiss him again.


End file.
